Pressure By Cheney Held Up The NIE Report For A Year

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers…There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear programme poses, according to the intelligence official’s account. Some analysts who are less independent are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney’s office, but others have rejected that view…Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi…told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House… As of early October, officials involved in the NIE were “throwing their hands up in frustration” over the refusal of the administration to allow the estimate to be released, according to the former intelligence officer.